Have you ever tried to learn a foreign language?
I remember struggling to learn French in high school, but when we travelled to France, I was surprised at how many little bits had stuck (I found there were signs I could read, but I couldn’t talk to anyone!)
A recent study by the website Virtual Capitalist has listed foreign languages in order of how difficult they are to learn.
They divided them into categories.
Category I includes those languages that are closest to English.
I have often made the point that English is a blend of Germanic and Latin source words.
So, the most similar languages are those that are called the ‘Romance’ languages—these are the languages that are directedly descended from Latin: Spanish, Italian and French.
There are enough recognisable words, and sufficient similarities of sentence structure, to make these less hard.
(You notice how I put that— ‘less hard.’ Still hard, but a bit less hard.)
They say that Category I languages will take 24 to 30 weeks (of solid study and practice) to learn.
This will amount to (they suggest) at least 23 classroom hours and 17 personal study hours.
And these, remember, are the ‘less hard’ languages.
It just gets worse folks!
In Category II are German, Indonesian and Swahili.
But why German?
Isn’t that where many of our words come from?
Ah, but English stopped being an inflected language back in the days of Old English and modern German is still a heavily inflected language.
So very different.
36 solid weeks here to learn the language.
Then Category III includes languages that have a totally different writing system to English: Greek, Russian, Arabic, Korean, Japanese and the two Chinese languages Mandarin and Cantonese (which are written the same but pronounced differently).
These Asian languages are killers to learn since you have master tones and inflections to be able to speak them.
For Category III they suggest 44 gruelling weeks will be needed to get anywhere near understanding the language.
So, how about it?
Feel inspired to learn a foreign tongue?
Or more convinced than ever to stick to good old English?
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BY THE WAY...
If you'd like to see my A-Z list of Aussie slang, you'll find it here in the Australian Geographic website -- A-Z list of Aussie slang. Here’s the link: The A-Z of Aussie slang - Australian Geographic
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